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Rio+20 is shorthand for The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) taking place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 20-22June 2012.

The number 20 refers to the number of years since the historic UN Conference on Environment and Development was held in 1992, also in Rio de Janeiro.

The Rio+20 Summit will be co-hosted by Brazil’s Minister of External Affairs and the Minister of Environment.

It will bring together non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academics, civil society groups and business leaders from every geography and sector, as well as the usual government and international officials.

On 16 April, the Government of Brazil in its capacity as Chair of the United Nations 2012 Summit on Sustainable Development (“Rio+20”) launched ten multistakeholder dialogues on Sustainable Development.

The Sustainable Development Dialogues will run through to June on a special Rio+20 Dialogues website (http://www.riodialogues.org).They will culminate in four days of discussion in Rio from 16-19 June.

The ten topics will be:

Food and nutritional security

Sustainable development for fighting poverty

Sustainable development as an answer to the economic and financial crises

The economics of sustainable development

Sustainable cities and innovation

Unemployment, decent work and migration

Energy

Water

Oceans

Forests

The Dialogues aim for a fresh perspective and to ensure broad, democratic and diverse participation in the process. They seek to identify existing or new projects, collaborations, commitments or initiatives that leaders from the NGO, research and business communities think could be global game-changers in each of these themes if they were to be replicated, scaled up, or created. What should be done to make them happen? These ideas will then be shared with World Leaders at the time of the Summit.

Fourteen experts from the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council Network have already kicked off the process with some initial thoughts on these themes. You can find their informal discussion paper here.

All opinions expressed are those of the author. The World Economic Forum Blog is an independent and neutral platform dedicated to generating debate around the key topics that shape global, regional and industry agendas.